The Emerson School

Test proficiency is well below district averages: 32.9% of students hit proficiency in ELA versus a district average near 63%, and math tells the same story (24.9% vs. 63%). Science proficiency (21.3%) is also low. The good news is the trend line — ELA proficiency roughly doubled from 17.3% in 2016 to around 33–36% in recent years, and math has climbed from 13.2% to the mid-20s. The school's overall score of 1.16 out of 4 sits well below the district average of 2.51. Seventh-graders outperform their sixth- and eighth-grade peers, especially in math (39.3% vs. 14.3% in 8th grade), suggesting a real drop-off after 7th grade worth asking about.

Parents clearly feel welcome here — parent satisfaction is 90%, parent-teacher trust is 89%, and parent-principal trust is 94%, all near or above district norms. Teachers rate instruction quality highly at 92%, but teacher-principal trust is a striking 48%, well below the district average of 91.7% on that metric, which suggests real friction between staff and leadership. The school day feels stable on the discipline front — suspensions have hovered around 16–18 per year for three straight years, though the suspension rate (5%) is meaningfully higher than the district's 0.4%. Attendance is a real concern: the 86.9% rate is below the district average of 91.4%, and 52% of students are chronically absent.

The student body closely mirrors the surrounding neighborhood: roughly 50% Black, 24% Hispanic, 21% Asian, with small shares of Native American, multiracial, and white students. The diversity index of 67% reflects a genuinely mixed enrollment rather than a single dominant group. About 22% of students have IEPs, and the economic need index of 77.7 indicates a population where most students come from low-income households — a higher concentration than many parts of Queens.

South Jamaica is a working- and middle-class Queens neighborhood with a median household income near $74,000, a 13.4% poverty rate, and a 20.3% share of households with children. About 46% of homes are owner-occupied and the median home value is around $587,000. Just under 18% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, which shapes the kind of family engagement and support services that middle-schoolers here benefit from.

The closest subway is the Jamaica Center–Parsons/Archer stop on the E, J, and Z lines, about an 18-minute walk — most Emerson families will likely rely on school buses, the Q3 and Q110 bus lines (not listed for naming), or car drops rather than the subway for the daily commute.